A great closure to this week, with a session surrounded by open, participative, attentive people in Urban Cicle about stories that encourage to put and keep the wheels on will.

Stories shared by Edite Amorim, focused on everything that is still possible.Personal stories, other people’s stories that have inspired, stories about simple adventures that end with a simple appeal to Presence, Conscience, and Intention in each detail.

A session for sharing ideas and reinforcing perspectives, put in practice by the entrepreneurs Daniela, João and Pedro, open to the ideas that contribute to a world where everything moves more on wheels!

THINKING-BIG keeps participative learning as a priority.To learn from different people, experiences, other ways of working, attitude or approach. Examples such as the 2 days working with Toyno, in Lisbon, in which the team goes away for a short period to become part of a new team and learn with it new concepts and new processes.As Gijs van Wulfen highlights: "Observe and learn - If you don't get new insights, you don't have new ideas".And this was exactly what we did with "5 días para bailar en Rivas", a Community Dance project, that brings together 60 people from 6 to 60 years, old learning through dance. We heard about this project in April’14 from the trailer of the documentary “Five days to dance”.

We immediately felt there was a lot to learn from the presented perspectives: in fact from our perspective, it is about applying the subjects of Positive Psychology (to reach and develop the best in each one of us) through Dance-Theatre. (“We have to be prepared for the best of each of us. For the maximum of each one!” – was one of the choreographer’s most repeated sentences throughout the process). From this process we could apply the things we would learn to Education, to Community life and to Citizenship in itself, as well as to Creativity. Impossible to resist the possibility of learning so much in just one experience.Therefore, we contacted the choreographers, Wilfried van Poppel and Amaya Lubeigt and proposed our presence in the replication of the project in Rivas, Madrid, as participative observers.And that is how we ended up among the 60 participants of this 8 days’ initiative, registering every step in a blog we created to systematize the experience and what we had learned: http://5diasparabailarenrivas.blogspot.pt.

From every tool, idea, perspective and concept we learned about by participating and observing. We leave here some of the key-ideas_

- “IF PEOPLE CAN DANCE TOGETHER, PEOPLE CAN LIVE TOGETHER!”

- Dance-theatre takes us to stages of other lives, makes us participants of this protected form that art gives us, makes us aware of other realities. To dance like this, in a group, gives us a power with responsibility for our part and for the whole.

- “Let’s create beauty. Share it. If you give something beautiful, you’ll get back something beautiful.” It is no longer about just dancing. It is about dancing in “Being more”!

- “Every time you’re on stage you have to shine. Because every one of you has something beautiful and precious to give. And that is what we want to see. Thus, every time we scream out a correction during a rehearsal, its for you to shine more, so that everyone can see all your potential to shine. You matter.”

- "Don’t forget to keep focus. As in the saying “I’m here. And I’m precious." And you're more precious every day.”

- “This is not a choreography in which there is one or two that shine. It’s a choreography where you need to feel everyone around you and make it TOGETHER.” Give the “I” a main role to be the best he can be, putting the group first.

- As Annette, one of the other german helpers, said at the end of one of the sessions: “It is to be connected. To understand our environment, our social environment, through the senses. Like different birds in a flock, that go for the same movement, for a single and unique flight, learning with its own body, through its own body.”

An experience in which the THINKING-BIG team was driven by the steps of Dance-Theatre and with which it became stronger. There is an even more amplified notion that the concepts we work on are applied, in fact, to every context.

"Steal like an artist: 10 things nobody told you about being creative". Austin Kleon. Workman Publishing Company. (2012)A fresh approach to the creative process, written from the author's own experience and in a very pragmatic and provocative way.

Here's the Amazon review:

"You don’t need to be a genius, you just need to be yourself. That’s the message from Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who knows that creativity is everywhere, creativity is for everyone. A manifesto for the digital age, Steal Like an Artist is a guide whose positive message, graphic look and illustrations, exercises, and examples will put readers directly in touch with their artistic side.

When Mr. Kleon was asked to address college students in upstate New York, he shaped his speech around the ten things he wished someone had told him when he was starting out. The talk went viral, and its author dug deeper into his own ideas to create Steal Like an Artist, the book. The result is inspiring, hip, original, practical, and entertaining. And filled with new truths about creativity: Nothing is original, so embrace influence, col- lect ideas, and remix and re-imagine to discover your own path. Follow your interests wherever they take you. Stay smart, stay out of debt, and risk being boring—the creative you will need to make room to be wild and daring in your imagination."